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Nina flicked her headla The ht feet below the quay level The light's narrow bea her knife, she pried potsherds fro after carefullytheir positions She discovered a channel and followed it seaward until it broke out into the lagoon The opening was easily big enough to allow for the passage of an ancient ship The space cut into the quay had all the characteristics of an artificial harbor known as a cothon She discovered several slipways, each big enough to acco, and a true piscine, which confirmed her theory about the cothon
Leaving the quay, she continued on her baseline course using the land spit to her right as a reference point She swam between the island and the ed mole or breakwater a few yards below the surface, constructed of paralleJ stone walls filled with rubble In a drier time it would have connected the mainland and the island
Coear and walked across thorncovered slabs of rock to the other side The island was , and mostly flat The trees she had seen from shore barely came up to her chin
Near the lagoon entrance were piles of stones, probably foundations, and a circle of blocks It was the perfect spot for a lighthouse or a watchtower, offering a sharpeyed sentinel a panoramic view of ship traffic Defenders could be suhted
Stepping inside the circle, Nina climented stair and looked out at the anchored ship she had seen earlier Again she wondered ould bring an Aovernment vessel to this arid and lonely coast After a htless environ, and she decided her fishy ancestors hadmistake when they crawled from the sea onto dry land
Nina swaoon entrance The other peninsula started low fro The sheer reddish rocks dropped straight into the water like the ramparts of a fortress Nina dove until she was at the base of the blank wall, looking for a footpath Finding none, she continued underwater to the seaward end of the promontory which terminated in a rocky shelf A perfect defensive position where archers could set up athe harbor
A horizontal slab protruded like a Stone Age awning from the rock face near the platfor the size and shape of a doorway Drifting closer, Nina squinted through her faceblackness She reht fell on a whirl of ghostly h bubbled froulator The silverscaled school of fish that had made the tunnel its home was more startled than she was
As her pulse returned to nor: Don't risk your neck for a nugget of knowledge that would end up in a dusty torim detail the fates of scientists ent too far Furbush was devoured by cannibals Rozzini was consumed by malaria ONeil dropped into a bottomless crevasse
Nina was convinced Knox made the names up, but she took his point She was alone, without a lifeline to unreel behind her Nobody knehere she was The very eleer that should have repelled her was seductive in its appeal She checked her pressure gauge By snorkeling, she'd used her air supply sparingly and still had time left
She o no farther The tunnel couldn't be very long Prih the rock She shot some pictures of the entrance, then moved forward
Incredible!
The floor was aly rowth
She went in deeper, forgetting her pact and Knox's sage advice as well The tunnel was the er than a sied city of Apollonia
The shsided cave that narrow
ed and widened, ht line, with s off Sconces for lamps were set into the carbonblackened walls The tunnel borers had extended the natural cave byan artificial one Nina e sandhogs